“The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commision), soon after being set up by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, found itself swamped by complaints: its first year of operation, nine thousand cases were filed; by 1975, it had seventy-seven thousand. Quickly, it fell far behind in addressing them.”
– Joshua Freeman, Pg. 271
The struggles the EEOC faced presented a grim reality that equality in the United States was not something everyone saw eye to eye on. The presence of a government institution such as the EEOC, meant to help the Black population with fair employment opportunities, was not enough to convince many citizens that equality was to be recognized as the law of the land. With thousands of lawsuits and many companies continuing to racially discriminate the Black community from its workforce, high hopes of equality quickly diminished to continuous tension. The government was clearly unable to handle the large pushback of many of its citizens. Joshua Freeman likely presented these statistics to give a clear picture of the struggles the country was facing as it attempted to ‘rebrand’ itself as a truly equal nation.
